


home, hearth & heartache

by clefairytea



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 18:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6388753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clefairytea/pseuds/clefairytea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You leave the palace and your crown behind, and vanish behind a stone door nobody can pass. In the ruins, you can build a safe haven, protect any further children that drop from up above. Perhaps you could become a mother, again, and try to understand what drew these children up the mountain and into the abyss to begin with. Try to heal that wound.</p>
<p>You suppose this is a form of cowardice in itself.<br/>--<br/>Toriel in the Ruins, and the six children who fell before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	home, hearth & heartache

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: A LOT OF CHILD DEATH, implied abuse.

“You’re a coward.”

Asgore looks at you, huge hands cradling one of his little teacups in his palm, and takes a sip of camomile. He doesn’t stand up, just sits there looking old and ragged. Your palms grow hot just looking at him, itching to hurl fire across the room and scream, but who will that help, really? Certainly not the child in the coffin, or the pale blue soul encased in the jar.

“We will wait for more children to come,” he says, “Tori, you can’t expect me to –“

“Asgore, you could pass the barrier with just this soul now. Reap six more to break the barrier when you _get_ there. Don’t just cower here hoping another child will cross your path.”

Asgore says nothing, but reaches for his teapot. You hurl a ball of fire at it and it shatter with a burst of hot water, soaking his hands. He whimpers, but you don’t feel even a twitch of sympathy for him right now. You don’t know how you’ve been married for so long and so happily to someone so loathsome, so weak.

That little child cowering behind the throne, a ribbon in their hair and a knife clasped in both of their hands. Not a real knife, a toy, as though from a plastic kitchen set. They had snuck in under their noses. With all the royal guard out looking for the one human in the Underground, this child had moved slowly and hid, bided their time. Even in the throne room, so close to going home, they had waited for Asgore to lumber in, humming and disarmed, before they tried to slice his throat. With a _toy_.

You know humans are dangerous. They were the reason you all lived down here in the crowded dark, they were ruthless and determined, with bodies that didn’t even rot after they were struck down.

Yet this human, with their twitching eyes and shaking hands, had looked so like _your_ human, had looked like your child even skewered on Asgore’s trident and choking out their last breaths in the dark, on the ground, full of so much anger and hurt you wonder how their tiny body managed to contain it. So like _them_.

Asgore had tried to comfort them, laying a hand in their hair and muttering about how things could have been different. They had spat in his face.

You understood perfectly why. How could they accept any sort of half-baked kindness at that point.

“I’m leaving,” you say, “I will not be returning this time. Declaring war alone was appalling…but this…”

Asgore continues to dry his hands, scrubbing and scrubbing with a handkerchief.

You can’t bear to look at him. You leave the palace and your crown behind, and vanish behind a stone door nobody can pass. In the ruins, you can build a safe haven, protect any further children that drop from up above. Perhaps you could become a mother, again, and try to understand what drew these children up the mountain and into the abyss to begin with. Try to heal that wound.

You suppose this is a form of cowardice in itself.

#

“Tori come home.”

“Tori, I’m sorry.”

“You know I can’t stop.”

“Where are you?”

“Perhaps no more will come through, Tori. This may already be over.”

“If it’s not over, I can’t back out now. Everyone is counting on me.”

You stop answering the phone.

#

The ruins are where the smallest monsters retreat, those too tiny or shy to thrive elsewhere in the Underground. The little spiders, barely monstrous at all, walk in lines around your feet and spin silvery webs in doorways and corners. At home, you dust away their cobwebs and sternly remind them the rest of the ruins is open to them, but your house is yours alone. Out in the ruins, you walk carefully to avoid treading on them. You buy a croissant, leaving a handful of money in a spiderweb and snacking on it.

The froggits look at you with round, barely comprehending eyes, and hop away the second you try to say hello. The whimsun flitter away, eyes to the ground, mumbling apologies and mixing up ‘Your Highness’ and ‘Your Majesty’, even though you and Asgore never once asked to be called either.

Sometimes, you find a loox or two lurking outside of your home, staring in the windows and blinking their single eyes slowly. You go outside, half in mind to invite them for a cup of tea, and they vanish.

You think you sometimes see a ghost, big-eyed and teary, but the second you look directly at them they fade out of view. You never knew you were so scary.

The vegetoids, at least, will talk to you.

Though all they say is ‘Eat your greens’, over and over and over.

It’s…not enormously engaging conversation.

Sitting in your chair, you hold a book about snails you discovered down the side of one of their old beds, and wonder how your little house can feel so large and empty.

#

It was only a matter of time, really. Looking at the child laying with their eyes closed, curled up on a bed of golden flowers, right over where _they_ are buried, you think about how you should have prepared better. Of course, you have your books, you have your home, you have made a world a child can grow up in, but you are not prepared.

“My child,” you say, crouching down and lifting the child’s head from the ground. They have dark curly hair, and a split lip dribbling blood down their chin. Around their neck, an orange bandana printed with a pattern that looks…a little like that Aaron fellow in Waterfall. There are a pair of pink gloves on their hands, in thick leather, held together with big clumsy stitches, like the child has been repairing them themselves for a long time.

The child wakes and strikes you, tumbling out of your arms. It barely hurts, but you stumble back anyway, and the child crouches like a cornered animal, wincing away from a strike.

They look at you with their tiny, vicious soul trembling orange in their breast. Not for the first time, you wonder what humans do to their children that makes them so frightened, so quick to respond to touch with violence.

“I will not hurt you,” you say softly, “I promise.”

You wait. The child stares.

“I’m – I’m sorry,” the child says eventually.

You take the child’s hand in yours and take them home. Along the way, you explain everything, because you think that is what needs to be done. You explain your husband, the gentle man turned child killer, and the swiftness the child will die if they wander from the ruins. You explain the Royal Guard patrolling the rest of the Underground, watching for humans and given instructions to kill. You explain how you will keep them here, safe here in the dark, and teach them and feed them and let them grow up in safety.

The child is taciturn, and you worry they hit their head on the fall. After some pie, you both head to bed, and you press a kiss to their forehead. They wince away and you do not try again.

In the morning, the child is already gone.

Within days, the Underground is celebrating yet another human Soul taken. You close your eyes and lock your doors and windows, and try to push the image of a trident’s three points through a narrow torso out of your mind, an orange bandana turning red.

#

Another child falls, but this one lands on their feet. They smile big and bright at you when you approach, and shake your hand with a graceful bow. They stand on their toes the whole time.

You try not to fall in love with them instantly, and you fail.

The little ballerina spends a few weeks with you in the ruins. You say nothing of the rest of the Underground, and hope they have little cause to question that there’s more. The spiders and the froggits and all the other monsters remain silent on the matter, wilting under your gaze whenever they as much as get near the child.

The child is cheerful, almost relentlessly so, and twirls on their toes, with a froggit perched on the back of their calf. They watch the whimsun, slowly pulling out their whispers into words, and whispering back. They hop over the spiders, careful to never even tread on a single spindly leg, and use their pocket money to buy cups of spider cider that you share, sitting looking out across the old turrets and roofs of Home.

“Tori?” the child asks, feeding a tiny slice of snail pie to the whimsun in their lap.

“Yes, my child?”

“…I want to go home.”

You look at them, surrounded and loved by every monster in the ruins, and the honesty of the gaze makes you stumble. They look as though they were just waiting for the right moment to break this bad news to you.

You suppose that is true enough, though you cringe to think a human child can sense your loneliness so easily, and has been humouring it so delicately for the past few weeks.

Despite your misgivings, you are not a gaoler. The ruins are small, and the human soul vast, and you know the dark and the cold of old stone, the puzzles and your collection of hardback books, already worn through with use, are not enough for a human child. Though you may feed them and wash them and keep them safe, they will still go hungry down here.

You walk them to the gate and hug them close, and tell them to always be kind, be honest.

They give you a final twirl - _en-pointe,_ it’s called – and leave to the blustery winds of Snowdin.

The child approaches the new captain of the guard, and follows your advice to the letter. They talk, they’re honest, they ask for help.

A splatter of red blood on armour and a dark blue soul held in a set of metal fingers becomes the new image of success in the Underground. You cry in private after hearing the news, whispered among the spiders and the loox, and wonder why on earth you let the poor child go to their death so easily.

#

“Do you have a pen?” is the first thing the next child asks you, after you pick them up off the ground. They show you the pen in their front pocket, snapped and bleeding blue ink across their chest. You can barely see their face through their thick glasses, though you note the tape wrapped around the bridge, and the way their hands tremble around their notebook.

You fish a pencil out of your pocket and give it to them, bemused. They don’t really smile, as such, or say thank you, but you get a sense they’re grateful all the same.

You explain very little. You mention the Underground isn’t safe. You say the child is welcome to stay with you as long as they like.

(Forever, you hope it’s forever.)

The child nods and notes it at all down. At the training dummy, they examine it closely and sketch it out. They draw pictures of froggits and label all their parts, the moldsmals they prod and pinch, and take a tiny sample of skin they look at under a magnifying glass. They run numbers for the spiders and tap their pencil on their bottom lip, frowning, and mumble about economic sustainability. They do not leave money in the web. They examine the architecture of Home, and work backwards through its history in their head.

You are happy enough to let them. They come back on evenings and show you their notes, explain the way a whimsun’s wings move, how this lets them hover in the air. They pour over your books on an evening, relay them back to you in ways you never thought. You goggle, and wonder if there’s room in the Ruins for a royal scientist.

You think about making them a badge. Something to cement their position as a scientist of the ruins. You start work on it when they’re out.

You finish and they don’t come home.

You wait. And wait. And wait.

You know what’s happened already. The ruins are too small. You know, yet you keep trying to hold these children here, caging them with pie and gentle words and your own weakness.

There is a letter under your pillow when you return for bed that night. Of course the child has figured out how to get out alone. Of course the child thinks they can brave the rest of the Underground to return home, they believe they can distil every danger into words and numbers and think faster than it. Like sheer dogged study of the world is enough to fight it.

The spiders spin a web around the child, and strip the flesh from their bones.

You push them further into the corners of the Ruins, and it’s only the thought that they, too, are following Asgore’s orders that stops you burning them all to cinders.

#

The next child is round-faced and has a ruddy nose, with fingernails that are never clean no matter how much you scrub. On your first night, they offer to make you dinner to thank you for your hospitality, before you can even ask what kind of pie they like.

Surprised, you sit and watch them in the kitchen, cracking eggs and mixing cake batter and frying vegetables, all the while humming. They make three courses, and they enough for you, for them, for the loox peeking through the windows, the spiders closing up their bake sale for the day, and they insist on even attempting to give some to the ghost. The ghost wells up, vanishes, but the meals goes with them.

The child isn’t much of an adventurer. They mostly stay inside, cooking and chattering to monsters through the window. They ask you about your day, even though they’ve been at home with you all day, and ask you, perfectly amiably, about how you came to live in the ruins.

You were determined not to talk about anything outside of the Ruins. You didn’t even want the idea in their head.

It’s just so hard to say no to a child who asks you thinks so tactfully, who makes you beautiful breakfasts and brings you them in bed.

Over coffee (divine), boiled eggs (exquisite) and homemade bread ( _unbelievable_ ), the whole story spills out. The child listens as only the best of audiences can. Their lower lip wobbles at the sad bits, and they clap their hands over their mouth in horror as you explain Asgore’s decision.

You even tell them about the children who’d died before. You beg them not to leave. They take your paws and say they can’t promise that, and you cry and know you’ve already lost.

They insist on leaving. You insist on giving them a phone, this time. Call if you’re in trouble, you say.

They call you constantly. Trouble or not.

They say they’re doing it for you. They want to face Asgore, they want to bridge the gap between the pair of you, they want to try to broker peace. In long messages left on your answering machine, they tell you about monsters they met that day, and all the meals they cooked them. Faced with a creature that wants to kill them, you child blocks their attacks and offers them snacks and juice and invites them to sit down and share a meal with them.

You should chase after them. Yet it sounds like so often, the monsters relent their attacks, and you begin to hope that perhaps this one will be different. You hesitate and wait and wrestle with yourself, and then, as always, it is too late.

You refuse to even learn how they died. You couldn’t bear to hear it.

#

The child finds you, this time. They bang on your door, and peeking from your window you see an almost comically tiny child, short and scrawny, wielding a revolver in one hand and with a cowboy hat askew on their head, their hair in a long butter-yellow braid down their back.

“Howdy!” they say, waving to you. They have a black eye but a big smile, and your heart hammers thinking of the Ruins monsters, confused by the conflict between your orders and Asgore’s attacking the strange child. “Y’all friendly? Would love to see a friendly face. Ain’t had much luck so far.”

Despite yourself, you open the door and let them in. They take their hat off and shake your hand, gentile as an old gentleman, and compliment your home.

Your heart breaks ahead of time.

You fix them a cup of coffee (The child asks if you have ‘anything a mite stronger, ma’am’. You tell them you most certainly do not.), and chat. They tell you about the flower that attacked them, spinning their revolver around the finger.

The child tells you that they’re here to investigate the missing children, and your heart reaches your throat. Through your swimming vision, you tell them, in disjointed terms, about all your children’s deaths. You don’t mention how they came here first. You don’t talk about how you failed to protect them.

The child’s expression goes dark, and they say something about Asgore you completely agree with but in language you’d rather a child didn’t use. The child tries to leave, muttering about stopping this monster before more kids get hurt.

You stand and block the exit.

You demand they train with you before you leave. It’s something that you say before you can think about it. You don’t want to train a child to fight, but nothing else has ever worked. Perhaps violence is the only option. The Underground, for children, is kill or be killed.

For days, the child dodges fireballs and shoots down targets. They’re precise and accurate, though refuse to point a bullet at small monsters, like froggits or whimsun. On breaks, they glug down spider cider, wipe down the sweat from their brow, and come back to fight some more.

They shoot you in the shoulder and you drop to your knees. You feel their hands on your back, mumbling apologies, asking if you’re alright. You nod, and stand. It hurts like hell.

Good.

You _want_ this child to be able to hurt someone that badly. They need to be able to.

You walk them to the exit and hug them tight. You hear them sob, once, into your neck.

They leave.

For all your training, you forgot to arm them properly.

They were not ready for Asgore’s smiles, or kindness, or his insipid promises of it being ‘Just like going to the dentist’s’. They had not thought of this monster as one who would offer tea or tend to flowers.

Asgore begs for forgiveness and the child falters, tears prickle their eyes, and Asgore drives his trident through their heart.

#

For a long time, the Underground remains human-free. You hope that it’s over, that no more children will fall. It’s more than the life of a child at stake now. With one more Soul, Asgore, your foolish, feeble husband, will break down the barrier. Humans and monsters, at war again, this time with no promise of simple exile. Death on both sides, all for the sake of one monster’s cowardice and stubbornness.

You spend your time sitting at the door, thinking about leaving the Ruins and making one last attempt to talk to Asgore. Bully him, if need be, into calling off his foolish war.

He wouldn’t listen. You know that without even trying. He has shed too much blood already, to Asgore stopping at this point would mean all those children died for nothing. Asgore sees the world too simply to realise that, regardless of what happens next, those children already died for nothing.

“Knock knock?” says a voice. It’s low, rumbling, and laid back enough to be horizontal. The kind of voice you could play a game of marbles on.

You jump.

“Wh-who’s there?” you say. It’s an earnest question. The voice on the other side of the door hesitates, and you suspect he didn’t expect an answer any more than you expected the question.

“Impatient cow.”

“Impatient cow w-“

“MOO!”

You dissolve into a giggling fit, the kind that wracks your whole body and makes you clutch your chest. It’s been _so_ long since you heard a really, really good joke like that. You wipe your eyes and hear the other person behind the door, chuckling to himself.

Taking a few deep breaths, you search your mind for a joke. It’s been a while since you told any. Your children always hated them, and Asgore simply smiled blankly at you and then, slowly, admitted he didn’t get it. Explaining the joke would then take the better part of a day and be enjoyable for neither of you.

Sometimes you’re not sure how your marriage lasted as long as it did.

“Ah, alright. I believe I have thought of one!” you say, and clear your throat, “I went to the doctor because I had broken my arm in two places. Do you know what he said to me?”

“Dunno, what?”

“Stay out of those places!” you say. The monster behind the door begins to laugh, and you beam.

“Heh, that’s a good one,” he says, “So. I’m just checking. You’re not a door, are you?”

“No. Are you?”

“No. Nothin’ against door monsters though,” he replies.

“Oh. Of course not,” you say, “They can be fairly sensitive about knock-knock jokes though.”

The monster behind the door laughs.

#

“Why didn’t the skeleton go to monster prom?”

“I don’t know,” you say, “Why?”

“He had no- _body_ to go with!”

You dissolve into laughter again. You had only just recovered from the last one.

#

“What do sprinters eat before a race?” you say.

“Dunno, what?”

“Nothing! They fast!”

You both laugh, and you wonder when was the last time you had this much fun.

#

“Why do you come here every day?” you ask.

It comes out sounding more abrupt than you meant, even accusatorial. That wasn’t your intent, you simply think you’ve forgotten how to be around other monsters a little. You used to be known as a very graceful queen, kind and courteous. You wonder what that past self would think of the silly little lady you are now.

It sounds like your new friend has a family, a brother he will talk about for hours if uninterrupted, and friends, or at the very least knows everyone at his local diner, and even something that sounds like a job. You can’t help but think he must have better things to do than listen to an old lady tell bad jokes all day.

“Huh. Why’s it matter?”

“I was just curious…I’m not particularly fascinating company.”

“What you talkin’ about. You love bad jokes and puns. Doesn’t get better company than that,” the other monster says, “Though I wonder about your dedication to talking through a door.”

You smile grimly to yourself. Sometimes it seems like it would be easy to leave. Every other day you wake up, with an image of yourself opening the door to the Ruins. You think about walking through the snow beside your new friend, exchanging jokes and able to look one another in the face. You think about meeting his brother, going to this diner. You think about Waterfall, listening to the Echo Flowers stories and looking up at the false stars on the cave ceiling. You think about Hotland, the new television star everyone is fussing over, actually being able to see him. Perhaps even talk about his shows with other monsters. You think about New Home, your old crown, your old throne. Not taking any of that old life back, but packing it away and putting it aside for good.

Then you think about the children who died because of you. Because you couldn’t protect them, you couldn’t stop Asgore, you couldn’t protect your own children. That the child buried down here needs you to stay with them, in a vigil across decades.

You always reach the door, and then curl in on yourself with cowardice, and sink to sit at the foot of the door, your arms wrapped around your knees. _He_ used to sit like this too, stifling sobs over some scraped knee or clumsy mistake.

“It’s simply a little easier for me, this way,” you say softly.

“Huh,” says the other monster. Not judgemental, or asking for more. Just acknowledging that perhaps some things are too difficult to speak about.

“May I ask you something?” you say suddenly.

“You already did, but shoot.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. I don’t enjoy it, but for now, so am I.”

You take a breath.

“I must ask you a favour.”

Your new friend is quiet behind the door. You take that as a cue to keep talking.

“One day, a human may walk through this door. I can’t tell you the kind of person they may be. I don’t know whether they will be good or bad, a friend to monsters or an enemy. I don’t even know if I will be around to open this door for them or not,” you say, the words spilling out of you very quickly, “However, I would like to ask you. Please protect them with all you have. Do not let the King take them.”

There is a silence that settles cold in your gut. Your palms burn and you rub them against each other – something you haven’t needed to do since you were a child yourself.

Eventually your new friend speaks.

“You know me and my bro, we’re sort of sentries. Our whole job is to look out for humans. My bro, he’s real into it. Capturing a human is all he talks about.”

“Oh,” you say, and almost go to stand.

“But,” your friend interrupts himself, “This means a lot to you right?”

“Yes,” you say, pressing a hand against the door.

“…Yeah. I’ll look out for this human. I don’t like makin’ promises, especially not for the sake of a hypothetical person, but. I will this time.”

“Thank you,” you breathe out, rubbing your eyes. You don’t know why this matters so much to you. Perhaps it’s just nice to have someone fighting the same battle as you. And the owner of the voice, you don’t know if he’s a strong monster or a weak monster, but there’s something very easy to trust about him.

It may just be all the good jokes.

“Hey, _you_ promise to come out of there one day,” your friend says, and you hear him knock on the door. You knock back, smiling.

“I will do my best.”

#

Frisk looks up at you, their fingers kneading their sweater, and they look so like _them_ , but the look on their face is so like _him_ , and maybe that’s what makes you stand in front of the door with your palms blazing.

“Prove yourself…” you snarl, and you’re not proud of what you sound like, you’re not proud of the almost disappointed look the child gives you, but you simply cannot go through this again. You would rather die. “Prove to me you are strong enough to survive.”

You are putting a child in a cage, but you would rather be a benevolent jailer, than the exiled Queen who sent another child to their death.

Frisk refuses to fight.

But Frisk also does exactly what you say.

Your fire misses them, and they stand between the streams of fire with that bandage on their cheek and a stick in their hand, but they refuse to swing it, and they shake their head again.

You are too weak to continue. Children will always walk all over you, you think.

Frisk drops their stick and holds their arms up for you. You crouch and take them tight into your arms. You can still smell butterscotch cinnamon pie on them, and the golden flowers you found them in.

You hold them tight, and then let them go, and hope their soul is stronger than yours.


End file.
